“A little while ago you asked me if I would tell you anything but —­but—­the truth,” he stammered, trying to find words to express himself, “and this—­”

“Is the truth,” interrupted Jeanne, a little coolly.  “Why should I tell you an untruth, M’sieur?”

Philip had asked himself that same question shortly after their first meeting on the cliff.  And now in the girl’s question there was sounded a warning for him to be more discreet.

“I did not mean that,” he cried, quickly.  “Please forgive me.  Only—­it is so wonderful, so almost impossible to believe.  Do you know what I thought of for three-quarters of the night after I left you and Pierre on the rock?  It was of years—­centuries ago.  I put you and Pierre back there.  It seemed as though you had come to me from out of another world, that you had strayed from the chivalry and beauty of some royal court, that a queen’s painter might have known and made a picture of you, as I saw you there, but that to me you were only the vision of a dream.  And now you say that you have always lived here!”

He saw Jeanne’s eyes glowing.  She had lifted herself from among the bearskins and was leaning toward him.  Her face was quivering with emotion; her whole being seemed concentrated on his words.

“M’sieur—­Philip—­did we seem—­like that?” she asked, tremulously.

“Yes, or I would not have written the letter,” replied Philip.  He leaned forward over the pack, and his face was close to Jeanne’s.  “I had just passed over the place where men and women of a century or two ago were buried, and when I saw you and Pierre I thought of them; of Mademoiselle D’Arcon, who left a prince to follow her lover to a grave back there at Churchill, and I wondered if Grosellier—­”

“Grosellier!” cried the girl.

She was breathing quickly, excitedly.  Suddenly she drew back with a little, nervous laugh.

“I am glad you thought of us like that,” she added.  “It was Grosellier, le grand chevalier, who first lived at Fort o’ God!”

Philip could no longer restrain himself.  He forgot that the canoe was lying motionless among the reeds and that they were to go ashore.  In a voice that trembled with his eagerness to be understood, to win her confidence, he told her fully of what had happened that night on the cliff.  He repeated Pierre’s instructions to him, described his terrible fear for her, and in it all withheld but one thing—­the name of Lord Fitzhugh Lee.  Jeanne listened to him without a word.  She sat as erect as one of the slender reeds among which the canoe was hidden.  Her dark eyes never left his face.  They seemed to have grown darker when he finished.

“May the great God reward you for what you have done,” she said, in a low voice, quivering with a suppressed passion.  “You are brave, M’sieur Philip—­as brave as I have dreamed of men being.”

Philip’s heart throbbed with delight, and yet he said quickly: